Abmaj7#5 guitar chord
The third voice from the top lowered an octave. The dropped voice becomes the bass, which is why a string is skipped.
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About Abmaj7#5 — drop 3 voicings
Abmaj7#5 is Ab, C, E and G — Abmaj7 with the fifth raised a semitone.
It sounds weightless, with no pull in it. Unlike an aug7 there is no flat seventh dragging it anywhere, so it colours a tonic rather than replacing it with a dominant.
Abmaj7#5 notes and formula
| Ab | C | E | G |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | 7 |
Tonic — the lydian augmented sound.
Also written AbM7#5, AbΔ7#5, Ab+M7 or Abmaj7(#5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Abmaj7#5
The same operation one voice further down: the third voice from the top falls an octave and becomes the bass.
That leaves a bigger hole under the top three notes, so a string gets skipped: the muted string in the middle is the shape, not a mistake.
Abmaj7#5 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: Ab in the bass, C in the bass, E in the bass and G in the bass. The one to learn first is the C shape at the nut.
5 of them sit on strings 6-4-3-2, so you can run the inversions up one set without changing strings — which is the whole reason to learn them as a family rather than as separate grips.
Start with xx2113 — no barre and down at the nut. 2 of the 9 shapes here sit in open position. 1 of the 9 needs a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xx2113 | 1st fret | E, 2nd inversion | G | all fretted |
| 432010 | open position | Ab, root position | E | 2 open strings |
| 435050 | open position | Ab, root position | E | 2 open strings |
| xx6553 | 3rd fret | Ab, root position | G | all fretted |
| 4x5554 | 4th fret | Ab, root position | Ab | barred |
| xx6988 | 6th fret | Ab, root position | C | all fretted |
| x-11-10-9-8-8 | 8th fret | Ab, root position | C | all fretted |
| x-11-10-12-x-12 | 10th fret | Ab, root position | E | all fretted |
| x-11-14-12-13-x | 11th fret | Ab, root position | C | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 2 shell, 14 drop 2 and 3 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Abmaj7#5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (Bb), the #11 (D) and the 13 (F).
How to use Abmaj7#5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Abmaj7#5 is Bbm7 to Eb7 — the ii and the V of Ab — and Eb7 shares its third and seventh with Bbm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
Chords near Abmaj7#5
Change one note of Abmaj7#5 and you have Abmaj7 (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth), Abmaj7b5 (the sharp fifth becomes a flat fifth), Abaug (drop the major seventh) or Abaug7 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh).
Abmaj7#5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Abmaj7#5’s sound and use this page follows Mark Levine, The Jazz Theory Book (Sher Music, 1995). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.